I saw a story about the Tarkhan Dress in Archeology Magazine in January and I wanted to recreate it! The Tarkhan dress being from 3482–3102 BC, is at least 5000 years old and is the OLDEST PIECE OF WOVEN CLOTHING FOUND AS OF YET! It is a miracle it has survived as well as it has and also still shows so much personality in its design. Egyptians in the 1st dynasty made their clothes from fringed rectangular pieces of cloth and would keep that fringed edge and incorporate it into their finished clothing. The Tarkhan dress has a fringe down along one side of its torso piece and along one of the v-neck, knife pleated top pieces. The Tarkhan dress has still shows grey thin striping down it's torso section and up along the v-neck collar. The illustration above is my attempt to recreate the dress. Being that I only had the brief internet data there is on the dress and not an Egyptologist looking over my shoulder as I made this, so there are probably aspects to this illustration that are not entirely correct. This Egyptian teenager's bag is total artistic license. I do not know if ancient Egyptians made custom bags from the spare fabric of their outfits to match. I know that's what I would do with that extra fabric. However EGYPTIANS DID DYE THEIR HAIR RED! They used henna as it is still used today in Egypt. Recent Archeological research done by Egyptologist Dr. Joann Fletcher, who specializes in Egyptian hair, found that not only did Egyptians dye their hair and wigs red with henna but also blonde and sometimes orange! The Tarkhan dress is assumed to have been worn by a teenager or very slim woman. I wanted to depict the teenager. This part of our lives that we consider so important today was often glossed over in our past. We only lived so long back then and so teenage years were often condensed into the beginning of adulthood. Thank you so much for reading if you have come this far, if you would like to read more about the Tarkhan dress and Egyptian hair, visit the links below.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/textil/dress.html#5

My paperdoll was just the beginning! Livia is just the start of a year long project designing Printable, Buildable, Playable Paper Products. Keep coming back to see what I make for Thanksgiving this month, then Christmas, Valentines Day and so on. At Christmas time 2017 I intend to collect what I make into a book for sale, here, on my website's store. I hope you are as excited as I am. I will be posting again about new things soon!